Light Is a Messenger

The Life and Science of William Lawrence Bragg

Graeme K. Hunter

Bragg was director of the research department in which Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA

Long rivalry with Linus Pauling, whose career paralled Bragg's

Bragg held many important scientific posts, including Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge University and Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain

Light Is a Messenger

The Life and Science of William Lawrence Bragg

Graeme K. Hunter

Description

Light is a Messenger, is the first biography of William Lawrence Bragg, who was only 25 when he won the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics-the youngest person ever to win a Nobel Prize. It describes how bragg discovered how to use X-rays to determine the arrangement of atoms in crystals and his pivotal role in developing this technique to the point that the structures of the most complex molecules known to man-the proteins and nucelic acids-could be solved. Although Bragg's Nobel Prize was for Physics, his research profoundly affected chemistry and the new field of molecular biology, of which he became a founding figure. This book explains how these revolutionary scientific events occurred while Bragg struggled to emerge from the shadow of his father, Sir William Bragg,
and amidst a career-long rivalry with the brilliant American chemist, Linus Pauling.